Of course: Keystone pipeline decision probably won’t be ready until early 2014 or so

posted at 4:41 pm on May 15, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

The Obama administration has repeatedly assured the public that they were just a hop, skip, and a jump away from making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, seeing as how its gone through years of environmental impact reviews from various sources and gotten a green light every time (which should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, since the project is no different than any of the other pipelines currently crisscrossing the United States). Their proffered timeline, however, keeps getting bizarrely punctuated with ostensible reasons for delay that just so happen to be mighty convenient for avoiding the political pickle in which an actual decision would land them; at first, it looked like President Obama just wanted to brush the issue under the rug until after last November’s presidential election, but now it just sounds like they’re trying to take it to infinity and beyond:

The Obama administration is unlikely to make a decision on the Canada-to-Nebraska Keystone XL pipeline until late this year as it painstakingly weighs the project’s impact on the environment and on energy security, a U.S. official and analysts said on Friday.

The decision may not be made until November, December or even early 2014, said a U.S. official, as President Barack Obama will not rush the process, which still has a number of stages to work through. One of those stages has not even begun yet and will run for months.

“The president has to be able to show that the administration looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone,” said the official, who did not want to be named given the sensitive nature of the project.

Analysts agreed that a decision would not be made by this summer as the State Department had suggested when it issued an environmental review on the pipeline on March 1.

Ugh. Do you think they’re just hoping that the herds will get bored and move on to another issue or something? That in and of itself is highly doubtful, because the hyper-environmentalist movement has too much riding on this to let it go; they have trumped it up into a symbolic battle about climate change because of the Canadian oil sands that will be developed and then sent through the Keystone pipeline, never mind that Canada is going to make use of their natural resources regardless of whether the United States is the buyer.

For the radically green lobbyist or the wealthy, eco-trendy progressive donor that does not happen to share the economic concerns of the American everyman, however, it’s still enough of a reason to try and thwart the project, and if the Obama administration can possibly stall on this decision until after the 2014 midterm fundraising season — or at least until they can introduce another major set of climate-related rules with which to appease/distract the eco-crusaders and mitigate the inevitable uproar — it looks like they are ready and willing to make every necessary bureaucratic contortion to do so.

“The president has to be able to show that the administration looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone,” said the official, who did not want to be named given the sensitive nature of the project.

How convenient. Too bad last time he looked under every stone, it was the stone for every Conservative group looking for 501(c) status.

I have an idea, why not let the underlings handle the pipeline, or better yet, let private industry help get the country back on it’s feet!

The “transformation of the USA” will continue unabated. Getting caught trying to silence the opposition by one agency doesn’t mean its not going on with others. They can make a lot of trouble behind the scenes.

I strongly support the Citizens United decision but am disgusted and frustrated that a very deep pocketed, micro-minority of radicals has enough power to deny Americans access to cheap energy. These eco-Nazis are driving up the cost of everything for everyone and they don’t care. Obama doesn’t care. The Democrat party doesn’t care.

How do we shut down these groups? One way would be for the GOP to cut EPAs funding, 50% of which they dole out in grants to radical environmentalists. They could also strip these groups of standing to sue on behalf of the public.

Price of gas went up over 30 cents in Minnesota and a dem legislature looking to raise state gas tax….right before summer lake season…..whos aid they were bright….who said those that vote for them are any brighter..

I would like to see every single opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline forced to wait at a railroad crossing, twice each day, for a 200-car train of tank cars carrying crude oil from Canada to refineries in the US.